Bleeding Out
by Kestrel Songwood
Summary: A strange girl has appeared at Domino High and has caught the attention of Seto Kaiba – a tough feat in itself. SetoxOC.


**A/N: Heya everyone, (or no-one as the case may be) I randomly felt like starting a fic with my own OC character at about 1:30 on a Sunday morning! Yay! lol. Therefore apologies (and excuses) if this is extremely crap. I'm not an amazing writer anyway I just enjoy getting the story down. I'll have to find out where this is going… **

**Disclaimer: I (unfortunately) own absolutely nothing. Faith belongs to me, although I'm damn sure that this kind of character and plot have been done to death. So therefore it probably belongs to a lot of other people as well. DANG. lol**

**Text in _italics_ are the characters thoughts.**

**Text in _italics_ and + is flashback/memory  
**

**Faith (17) appears at Domino High after having been sent there from a shelter for homeless youths. A loner and refusing to associate with people, no-one knows who she is or where she has come from, not that they would care anyway. She has issues…oooOOOOoooo hehe ;)**

Faith slid out of the door passing her petite 5ft 4 frame easily through the gap without having to open it further. She sighed resentfully as she took a cigarette from her bag and tucked it behind her ear. She'd finally got out of maths. She never understood what the point of that lesson was anyway; all those numbers and lame ass facts. How was understanding Pythagoras Theorem ever gonna help her in life? …enable her to achieve perfection in triangular sandwich making?

She hated school. She hated everything about it. She hated the fact that she had to be there, she hated the fact that she had to attend lessons she didn't want to learn about, she hated the work, she hated the teachers, she hated the rules, hell she even hated the people. School was the biggest fucking waste of time ever, but she didn't have a choice. Well, she did have a choice – she could run away again. But she knew that this would solve nothing. Until she was 18 someone would always make her go to school, no matter where she ran to. Damn stupid law.

The best she could do was ignore the rules and try to do as much of what she wanted when she could. She had asked her maths teacher if she could go to the loo; a common expedition on her part that was as obvious as a slap in the face to her teachers, and yet they could do nothing about it.

"_I need to go to the toilet." She stated simply, stopping Miss Hitakitio mid-sentence in a spectacularly interesting geometry explanation._

_Wide mouthed with a combination of outrage and shock at her interruption, the middle aged maths tutor simply stared, scandalized, at the offending toilet-goer in the back row._

"_Hello? Girl in need of urination here." The girl said waving her hand at the stunned woman, a sardonic smile on her lips, much to the amusement of the class._

_The grey-haired teacher, dismayed at having been mocked in such a manner, composed herself and replied with a rather more demanding expression on her tired looking face._

"_Faith, I think you can wait until the end of my class." She turned slightly as if to carry on with her previous endeavour, only to find the student was on her feet and walking towards the door._

"_Miss Wood where do you think you are going?"_

"_Are you deaf? I need a piss." She had stopped now and was staring her teacher directly in the eye._

"_You will not talk to me in this manner Miss Wood, now please return to your seat." The teacher demanded, attempting to regain control. The student almost felt pity for this pathetic attempt at dominance._

_Faith smirked and moved her hands down to her skirt zip._

"_Do you really want me to wet myself Miss Hitakitio – cos I will. Seriously. I'll go right here and now on the floor if necessary." She began to unzip the short pleated skirt much to the teacher's horror, and earned herself an amused laugh from the already entertained class._

"_Oh for goodness sake Faith, go to the toilet." Miss Hitakitio muttered, surrendering to the persistence of the subject of her irritation. "Don't be long." She added wearily, resigning herself to the fact that 'Miss Wood' would no doubt 'get lost' on her way back._

"_Oh I won't be," Faith replied, flashing Hitakitio a markedly false smile, followed by a mocking salute, and sauntered lazily out of the classroom. She had been utterly unaware of a pair of icy blue eyes observing the entire episode, seemingly completely deadpan, from behind his laptop in the back row. Eyes which followed her out of the classroom and out of the corridor exit. _

She giggled slightly as she recalled Hitakitio's face at her use of the word 'piss'. It was not a term commonly used in this country, but there was no way that even though her father had dragged her away from England she would stop using the language that she felt nearest to. She supposed it was part of her feelings of resentment at having been forced to come and live in Domino City after being perfectly happy back home in England. Although that wasn't entirely true; she hadn't been perfectly happy, even back then.

Annoyed at her train of thought, not wishing to drag up dark memories whilst still at school, she busied herself with finding her lighter. Nimbly drawing the cigarette from behind her ear and sliding it between her lips she lit up, revelling in the smoke that streamed from her mouth. It wasn't that it calmed her in any way, more that it gave her a feeling of testing her existence, attempting to feel alive. It staved from her boredom.

She leant against the wall for a moment, cigarette poised between the slender fingers of her tiny hands, absent-mindedly flicking ash onto the floor. What was she going to do now? After math she was timetabled for lunch followed by Bio. Yeah right. Skipping the rest of school was the order of the day.

She supposed she would go home and get ready for work, perhaps turn up early and get some more money. She sighed at the thought of having to worry about money, beginning to feel crappy on top of the already heavy boredom. _Whoop-di fucking do. _It was her fault anyway that she had to rely on herself for money. If she moved out of the shelter and into Care like she was supposed to be then she wouldn't have to provide for herself anyway. But there was no way she was going into Care. No fucking way. Not after escaping from home. She promised herself that she would care for herself and **nobody** would ever have control over her **ever** again.

She waitressed for an Italian restaurant in town: La Belladino's. It made her laugh how strange it was to find such a clichéd European place in the middle of a Japanese town, but never-the-less it paid a decent salary and allowed her to work when many places didn't accept under-18s. She got the job under the deception that she lived with her 'older brother'; her 'legal guardian', who was actually a worker at the shelter who agreed to help her out. After all, who would employ a homeless teenager? It gave her enough money to buy some of her uniform (the bits that she deemed acceptable to wear) and a few other essential items, and the shelter provided her with food and a place to stay, but her life was far from perfect.

The unbearable weight of her past and the hopelessness of her future bore heavily down upon her soul, twisting her insides, building up a wall of immense pain and grief that only increased day after day. She was filled with hate and pain. Hate and pain that infected her mind, body and heart, and constantly tormented her. As a result she had grown cold, depressed, confused and desperate; desperate to feel alive, desperate to experience living, desperate to die. She had lost her faith in people, and tried to test her existence to its limits, needing to feel the risks. That was partly why she cut herself.

She was beginning to feel that aching sensation. That desperate need for release. She could put it off for now, but soon it would become too much, and desperate for release she would have to take out her razor, and add another small score to the top of her thigh. Trying to forget the burning sensation she was feeling and the inconsolable urge to reach for the box in her bag she took a drag of her cigarette. As long as she didn't concentrate on her painful memories she could last for a little longer.

She turned swiftly around and came face to face with the solid body of Seto Kaiba.

**A/N: First chapter finished, perhaps shorter than what I would usually write, I just wanted to end it here. **

**You might find the romance a little slow – I want to concentrate on the angst first. I dunno where this going so we'll see what kind of future it has soon enough. Hehe**

**Kess**

**xxx**


End file.
